


bit of a disaster, aren't we?

by katsumi



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9314513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: Clarke breaks her ankle and really would prefer that Bellamy not find out about it. She has a feeling he's going to get mad. (She's right.)





	

“On a scale from one to ten,” says Clarke, “how ridiculous is this?”

 

Monty raises an eyebrow, scoots his chair a little closer to her bed, and gestures at the surrounding medical equipment. “I mean...like at least an eight.”

 

“I was going to try for seven,” Clarke says primly, smoothing out a wrinkle in her (very uncomfortable) hospital gown. “An optimistic seven. People get injured. That happens.”

 

“It’s not the _fact_ that you’re injured that’s ridiculous,” Monty notes. “It’s how you got that way. You fell down a flight of stairs, Clarke.”

 

“Yes. True. But—”

 

“Because your shoelaces weren’t tied.”

 

“Again, true. But that doesn’t—”

 

“While holding, like, a bazillion canisters of other people’s pee.”

 

Clarke scowls at him. “That’s my job, though. Doctor. Doctor-in-training. Sometimes we carry pee—err, urine. Not ridiculous.”

 

Monty laughs warmly, clasping her forearm. “Yeah, see, the individual components of this: not ridiculous. But when you put it all together: you tripped over your shoelaces at work, fell down a flight of stairs, broke your ankle, and almost concussed yourself. But at least you didn’t get covered in pee.”

 

Clarke groans, leaning back against the pillow. “Remind me why you’re my emergency contact, again?”

 

“Because I’m reliable and you love me,” Monty says, grinning. “And hey, I held of on laughing at you until I was sure you were okay. _Friendship_.”

 

Clarke rolls her eyes, but it’s half-hearted: she does love Monty, and to be honest, if she were in his shoes, she’d probably still be laughing.

 

“Thanks for coming to get me,” she says. “I still think it’s weird they called you since I’m technically _at work_ and I _told_ Wells not to, but here we are.”

 

“Well, technically I didn’t come to _get_ you,” Monty reminds her. “I came to _see_ you. I have no car. I biked here. And I’m pretty sure the doctors won’t like it if I give you a ride home in my basket.”

 

“It would be adorable, though,” Clarke offers.

 

“I tried it with Jasper once. It’s actually way less adorable and way more creepy than you’d think.”

 

“Bummer.”

 

“I know.” Monty sighs, digging out his phone. “Want me to call Bellamy?”

 

Clarke flinches.

 

“Err,” she says, sitting up a bit and _crap_ , her head hurts. “No.”

 

Monty glances at her. “But he has a car.”

 

“Yeah, still no.”

 

“But it's Bellamy. You guys are like best friends.”

 

“Again, _no_.”

 

“Are you fighting again?” Monty sighs. “‘Cause this is not the moment to be petty. You can be petty later.”

 

“We aren’t fighting, and I’m not petty. I just…” she trails off.

 

A few hours ago, the last time she checked her phone, she had five texts from Bellamy reminding her not to work through her lunch break. She’d fallen asleep on his and Miller’s couch three nights back, her anatomy textbook spread across her chest and her head on Bellamy’s thigh. She’d woken up in the exact same position six hours later; Bellamy had _slept there_ , sitting up like he was on a redeye with a pillow bunched under his ear, because he hadn’t wanted to disturb her. And waking up to Bellamy, asleep in the soft morning light, had been a lot to handle.

 

“You’re wearing yourself too thin,” he’d said that morning, cooking her some eggs. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

 

“But you already take such good care of me,” she’d replied, still disoriented in the early morning light, and she was pretty sure she caught a flush on Bellamy’s face before he’d turned away.

 

“Fine,” she’d muttered, trying not to flush herself. “I’ll try.”

 

What with raising a sister prone to climbing up and then falling out of trees, Bellamy’s protective instincts are naturally always on high alert. Clarke tries to be sensitive to that. And she knows that “instead of taking your advice and getting more sleep, I stayed up researching kidney stones and then spent the next day so tired I literally fell down the stairs” won’t go over well.

 

“Don’t call Bellamy,” she tells Monty, firm. “In fact, don’t even tell Bellamy. In an ideal world, Bellamy will never find out about this.”

 

Monty is clearly skeptical. “I thought they said it’ll take your ankle six weeks to heal? You’re going to avoid Bellamy for _six weeks_?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Clarke.”

 

“Just—” She huffs. “Just give me some time to figure it out, okay? My head hurts. Don’t make me deal with Bellamy _right now_.”

 

Monty looks like he’s trying really, really hard not to roll his eyes.

 

“Fine,” he says, pressing some buttons on his phone and bringing it up to his ear.

 

“Wait, who are you calling?” Clarke asks.

 

“Miller.”

 

“You can’t call Miller!” Clarke whisper-shrieks. “He can’t keep secrets from Bellamy! He’ll rat me out!”

 

“He has a car and I’m already dialing,” Monty says, giving her a helpless shrug. “What do you want me to—hey, Nate!”

 

Clarke groans.

 

“Yeah, sorry to call while you’re still at work,” Monty says. “I was wondering, could you possibly give me a ride home? Yeah, thanks. Oh, and can you make sure you put the back seat down so there’s enough room to stretch out? I’m at the hospital, by the way.”

 

Clarke’s a few feet away, but even she can hear Miller swear over the line.

 

Monty huffs. “Calm down. It’s not for me, I’m here because—” But then Clarke glares at him and he stops, wide-eyed. “Uh...I’m visiting Clarke?”

 

“I thought you were supposed to be _good_ at thinking on your feet,” Clarke grumbles at him.

 

“No, I’m not lying,” Monty says into the phone. “Oh, uh, why did I take off work three hours early to visit Clarke in the middle of her shift?” Monty scratches his head. “That’s a good question. And if you’ll just give me a second, I’ll be able to come up with a good answer…”

 

Monty holds the phone away from his ear and turns back to Clarke.

 

“This isn’t working. He’s freaking out.”

 

“Good,” Clarke grunts. “He’s always so damn calm.”

 

“ _Clarke_.”

 

“Fine.”

 

Monty smiles, bringing the phone back to his ear. “Nate, I’m fine. Clarke broke her ankle. She didn’t want me to tell you that, but I think that’s dumb, because the cast makes it pretty obvious that she broke her ankle.”

 

Clarke gives him the finger. Monty just beams back at her.

 

“Yeah, she’s okay. Yeah. Yeah that’s fine, we still need to get her discharged, so...yeah, call me when you get here? Okay, love you too, bye.”

 

“And that,” Clarke says, as Monty hangs up, “is why I don’t want to tell Bellamy. So much yelling.”

 

“Well, Miller is my boyfriend,” Monty says, reasonably. “Like, it’s within his rights to yell if he’s worried about me.”

 

“Bellamy—” Clarke starts. She swallows, tries again. “Well, you know how he is. Bellamy is...Bellamy. He worries about people.”

 

“Yeah,” Monty shrugs, eyebrow raised. “ _People_.”

 

* * *

 

When Miller shows up, the backseat of his car is stuffed with at least seven pillows. Perched on her new (and very uncomfortable) crutches, Clarke glances at him, confused.

 

Miller shrugs. “I stopped at home first.”

 

“Yeah, that’s not an explanation.”

 

“Don’t you need to like, elevate your leg or something?”

 

Clarke’s rather touched, but also not about to reveal how touched she is. “I'm pretty sure I’ll be fine for the ten minute drive, Miller.”

 

Miller rolls his eyes. “Get in the damn car, Clarke.”

 

And it turns out, lying smushed within a backseat pillow fort with her leg raised is actually pretty comfortable. One point for Miller.

 

After Monty’s strapped his bike to Miller’s bike rack and climbed into the front seat, Miller peels out of the parking lot.

 

“I’m taking you to our place,” he announces.

 

“No, you’re not,” Clarke snaps back. Because _our_ means _mine and Bellamy’s_ and seriously, she just doesn’t have the strength.

 

“You live alone,” Miller says. “Aren’t you supposed to have someone wake you up every two hours or something?”

 

“That’s if you have a concussion. Which I don’t. I have an _almost_ -concussion.”

 

“They’ve got the space,” Monty points out. “And food. I know for a fact that the only thing in your fridge right now is five day-old pizza.”

 

“I’d really just rather go home,” Clarke insists, and they seem to take her to heart.

 

But then when they get to her apartment, Miller parks and both he and Monty walk her to her door. And then follow her in. And then don’t leave.

 

“Guys,” she says, as Monty settles onto her couch and pulls his laptop out of his backpack, like he’s making himself at home. “You really don’t need to do this. You can go home.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Monty says, without even looking at her.

 

“God,” Miller calls out from her kitchen. “You weren’t kidding about this fridge!”

 

“ _Guys_ ,” she repeats. “I’m serious. I’ve got this under control.”

 

“Yeah,” Monty shrugs, “a few hours ago you fell down a flight of stairs, and now you want us to trust your ability to not hurt yourself on crutches? No, thanks.”

 

“Hey,” Miller says, wandering back into the living room, “what are you still doing on your feet? Lie down, jesus.”

 

Clarke huffs—honestly, she’s like _barely_ hurt—but her chest is warm. Her mother always subscribed to the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” method of parenting, so she never really got fussed over as a kid. It feels kind of nice.

 

Monty shifts his computer to the armrest and Clarke lays her head on Monty’s knee, stretching out across the couch. Miller even goes all the way back to the car to get more pillows to stuff under her feet because “how do you have no pillows _and_ no food, it’s like you don’t even live here.” Miller grabs a chair from the kitchen and pulls it up beside the couch, and they turn on Ice Age, because according to Monty it’s “the perfect sick day movie.”

 

It’s been a tremendously humiliating day overall, but Clarke has to admit: this part is pretty okay.

 

At some point, she must fall asleep, because she wakes up to furious knocking at her door.

 

“The hell?” she mumbles.

 

“That must be Bellamy,” Miller says.

 

“Oh,” Clarke says. “Wait. _What?_ ”

 

“I told Bellamy to grab takeout,” Miller says, like this is some kind of reasonable explanation. Clarke twists her head up to look at Monty; he’s smiling down at her, sheepish.

 

“I just realized I may have forgotten to tell him about the whole _not telling Bellamy_ thing,” Monty admits.

 

“Monty!”

 

“Wait, what’s going on?” Miller asks.

 

Clarke glares at him. “Did you tell him about this?”

 

“I assumed you already had,” Miller throws back. “You tell him _everything_.”

 

The pounding on the door gets louder.

 

“I’m going to let him in,” Miller says, “before he hurts himself and I have to take care of both of you.”

 

And then he opens the door and Bellamy’s standing there, scowling. Monty offers him a feeble wave.

 

“You were in the _hospital_?” Bellamy demands, without so much as a hello.

 

“Well to be fair,” Clarke says, just to be difficult, “I’m always in the hospital. I work there.”

 

Bellamy does not look amused by this. He stalks in, dumping two brown bags of what smells like Chinese food takeout on the coffee table.

 

“You were in the hospital,” he repeats, “and I only learned about it because Miller made a joke about what he wants to write on your cast.”

 

Clarke turns to Miller. “What do you want to write?”

 

Miller just grins.

 

“Clarke!” Bellamy snaps, pulling her focus back to him. “What the hell happened?”

 

“I thought Miller told you.”

 

“I want to hear it from you.”

 

Clarke sighs; Monty pats her shoulder, comfortingly.

 

“I fell down the stairs,” she explains, gesturing at her foot, “and broke my ankle. Not that big a deal.”

 

“She did _not_ get a concussion,” Monty adds. “Or get covered in pee. And both were real possibilities.”

 

“True,” Clarke says. “This is so not as bad as it could have been.”

 

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Bellamy demands. He’s glaring down at her, flushed and frowning, and Clarke’s not sure whether she’s mad at him for being angry, or mad at herself for making him angry, but suddenly she’s just, well...mad.

 

“Who says I _have_ to tell you you anything?” she shouts, even though shouting makes her head echo like the reverberations from a drum. “I didn’t want to tell you, so I didn’t!”

 

She regrets it the second she says it. Bellamy’s mouth drops open, and it’s hard to miss the hurt that flashes sudden and sharp in his eyes. The room is suddenly, painfully quiet.

 

Monty’s hand grips her shoulder, gives it a squeeze.

 

“Hey Nate,” he says, cheerily, as though completely ignoring the sudden temperature shift in the room. “Let’s go get Clarke some groceries.”

 

Miller, who looks like he’d rather be _anywhere else in the world_ but here, nods vigorously.

 

Clarke starts to protest, but Monty cuts her off. “Leftover Chinese will only last you so long. We’ll get you stocked up.”

 

He smiles, and Clarke accepts defeat; she's feeling too miserable to argue, anyway. Monty cups the back of her head, coaxing her up as he prepares to slide his legs out from under her, but then he stops.

 

“Hey Bellamy,” he calls, “can you take over? Clarke needs a pillow.”

 

Clarke wants to point out that she could use an actual pillow—thanks to Miller she has _way too many_ —but Bellamy is already moving towards her, biting at his lip, face carefully blank. Clarke’s heart squeezes somewhat painfully. She shifts up as they switch places, settling back onto the familiar solidness of Bellamy’s thigh. She determinedly does not look up at him.

 

“Buy vegetables,” Bellamy calls, as Monty and Miller leave. “Like, even just one vegetable.”

 

Monty salutes, and then the door closes behind them.

 

For a while, no one speaks.

 

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says eventually, still staring resolutely at the ceiling. “That I didn’t tell you.”

 

“It’s fine,” says Bellamy, very unconvincingly.

 

“It just...it really wasn’t a big deal.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I was only—”

 

“It’s fine, Clarke,” he repeats. His voice is thin, clipped. “You didn’t want to tell me. You don’t need to come up with a better reason. You not wanting to tell me is enough..”

 

She sighs. “Honestly, I just didn’t want you to yell at me.”

 

“Why would I yell at you about this?”

 

“Because you’re always telling me to take better care of myself, and clearly, I’ve been failing to do so.”

 

Bellamy huffs. “Did you fall down the stairs because you didn’t get enough sleep?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“ _Clarke_.”

 

“See?” Clarke says, reaching up to pat his shoulder. “It’s annoying, right? This whole thing is annoying.”

 

Bellamy snatches her hand before she can lower it again, holds it firm against his shoulder.

 

“Clarke, I’m not annoyed,” he says, firm. “I’m worried.”

 

“Cause I’m such a mess?” she laughs. “Yeah, I’m worried, too.”

 

“No,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that makes her breath catch. “I just...worry about you. A lot. Kind of all the time.”

 

“Wow,” Clarke mumbles, unsure of what to say. “I didn’t realize I was that much of a mess.”

 

Bellamy huffs a small, feeble laugh.

 

“You’re not a mess,” he says, squeezing her fingers. “I am. At least, when it comes to you.”

 

Clarke takes a deep breath. When she tilts her head to look at him, he’s looking back at her—soft, a little scared—and some tightly-wound part of her relaxes, floods with warmth.

 

“Bellamy,” she says, smiling. “My arm’s falling asleep.”

 

He lets go of her hand immediately, and she laughs.

 

“Not what I meant,” she says, curling her fingers between his and tugging his arm down so that their hands rest on her stomach. “There. Better.”

 

Bellamy exhales, a little shaken, and squeezes her hand.

 

“You know,” Clarke says, strangely self-assured in this moment (she'll blame it on the almost-concussion), “I’m kind of a mess about you, too.”

 

His eyes widen. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Bellamy bites at his lip, looking down at her with renewed intensity, and damn, what a sight.

 

“Clarke,” he starts, tentative. “We’re talking about the same thing, right?”

 

Clarke smiles. “How we’re both messes?”

 

“Well, yeah, but—”

 

He cuts off with a sharp breath as Clarke lifts their joined hands to her lips and kisses his knuckles. When she looks back up at him, he’s grinning.

 

“If you hadn’t just suffered a head wound,” he says, lightly stroking her hair with his free hand, “I’d kiss you for real.”

 

“I didn’t suffer a head wound,” Clarke retorts, smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. “I _almost_ suffered a head wound. It’s safe to kiss me. I would know; I’m a doctor.”

 

“Yeah,” Bellamy says with a shrug, “I’m not going to risk it until I know you’re feeling better.”

 

“You’re such a worrywort. C’mon, just one?”

 

“Stop,” he laughs, squeezing her hand. “I’ve been thinking about this for ages. I’m not wasting our first kiss if you can't fully participate.”

 

“Oh, I’ll participate,” she grins, reaching up to tug at his shirt. He catches her hand, pulls it to his lips.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” he says against her skin, all fond and warm. Clarke laughs, so full of affection she feels like she might burst from it.

 

“Well, that makes two of us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Clarke and Monty's friendship is very important to me. Clarke and Miller's friendship is very important to me. They're all very important to me and I just want a universe where they hang out all the time and bicker with each other.
> 
> I'm over at [leralynne](http://leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to come say hi!


End file.
